Microsoft touts "different" Windows Phone 7

Microsoft has gone on an offensive to try and win back developer support on its Windows Phone platform. Tellingly, the main thrust of the attack is on how "different" the platform is compared to the old versions of Windows Mobile.

In a lengthy blog post from Charlie Kindel - Windows Phone's partner group program manager - the company laid out exactly how the experience will be different for developers. He outlined three key goals - letting end users be able to customise their handsets, allowing developers to profit from their creations, and pushing a vision of "3 screens plus cloud" - referring to your phone, your PC and your TV.

But Microsoft admitted that making the change wouldn't be easy - "For us, the cost of going from good to great is a clean break from the past. To enable the fantastic user experiences you’ve seen in the Windows Phone 7 Series demos so far we’ve had to break from the past. To deliver what developers expect in the developer platform we’ve had to change how phone apps were written. One result of this is previous Windows mobile applications will not run on Windows Phone 7 Series".

That could upset developers who've spent plenty of cash on developing content for Windows Mobile 6.5 and before, but it's likely that it won't be too tough to convert them to the new platform. However, some suggest that starting from scratch could be a tough proposition for the company, especially with Google and Apple ruling the roost when it comes to apps.